Threads
by yankee306
Summary: Post-"Don't Cry" angsty fluff - SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 FINALE


Marshall knew it wasn't fair. None of Mary's family had been allowed to see her since they'd arrived at the hospital. Jinx, Brandi, and Raphael were still in the waiting room, hoping every minute that Mary's surgeon would tell them she was stable enough that he could begin to repair the damage from the bullet that had ripped through her abdomen, shredding blood vessels on its way.

He knew it wasn't fair, but that didn't stop him from flashing his badge at the nurses' station in the ICU. He didn't give a good goddamn about what was fair to anyone else.

There were two marshals stationed outside the door to Mary's room. There was little risk of the shooter or another gang member trying to finish Mary off, but Stan wasn't going to take the slightest chance. Marshall knew both marshals and greeted them in turn. "Miriam, Charlie. Everything okay? Quiet?"

Miriam Spitz answered, "Everything's fine. We've got it locked down."

Marshall nodded his thanks as Miriam asked, "How are you holding up?"

"I'm okay," answered Marshall, looking anything but. It had only been a few hours since he'd gotten Dershowitz's call and sped pell-mell to the hospital. He'd ditched his truck in the emergency bay, showed his badge and handed his keys to a security guard to move the truck out of the way. He'd torn through the corridor, frantic, not seeing anything other than the gurney carrying Mary, not hearing anything other than the screaming in his own head.

He caught up with her just long enough to tell her to fight, to _stay here, _before she was swept away behind doors he wasn't allowed to enter.

Since then, he'd been waiting. Waiting to know if Mary would live or die. Waiting to know if Mary would be herself or if she had been irreparably damaged when her heart stopped and starved her brain of oxygen.

Standing outside her room now, Marshall looked haggard and drawn.

"I'll just do a quick check inside for . . . ." Marshall didn't know how he was going to end that sentence, but he didn't need to.

Charlie interrupted, "Go ahead." Mary was Marshall's partner and that's all these or any other marshals needed to know.

Marshall pushed open the door and stepped into the small, dim room. Mary lay on the bed, illuminated by the glow of a crowd of machines that were pulsing and beeping around her. She looked small and pale and so, so still. She barely resembled her conscious self, a constant whirl of motion who practically kicked up dust in her wake. Even when she sat, her feet were tapping, her fingers drumming, her mouth moving, her eyes staring or squinting or searching, her brain spinning. Now she was still, so terrifyingly still.

Marshall watched the ventilator breathe for her.

_Mary would hate that, _he thought wryly. _She hates having anything done for her._

_I swear to God, Mary, if you're okay, when you're okay . . . if you're . . . then I promise I'll . . . ._

_I'll what? Tell you my feelings, unvarnished, not hidden coyly behind a best friend's toast, not tangled in metaphor so that each of us has plausible deniability? _

_Or I'll finally back all the way away and accept that I'm just not the one you want, even if you come to your senses about Raph? _

What was fair to her? To him?

God willing, Mary would soon awaken and Marshall would be forced to choose. Tell. Don't tell. Hang on. Give up. How was he supposed to decide?

l---------------------------------------------------

Aphorisms stitched onto pillows say you should tell people how you feel about them before it's too late, but life is a lot more goddamn complicated than a bit of needlepoint. The threads of partnership, friendship, and love are delicate and easily tangled. The safest course is to simply lay the threads down next to one another, parallel but separate, to admire the differences in color and texture. Or you can try to stitch them into a pattern, but if you make too many mistakes or tug too hard, the threads will twist into painful knots that can't be untied. If you have to pull out your stitches, the threads will become more frayed and ragged each time you start over, until they are too fragile to be handled again. Or, with patience and skill and more luck than either Marshall or Mary had known in their lives, the threads can be woven together into a tapestry of unsurpassed beauty.

Marshall had learned how to do a hundred things: to shoot with both hands, to build a one-match fire, to dance with grace, to triangulate a shooter's location from shadows and trajectories, to circumvent stupid rules, to salvage a fallen soufflé, to make love unselfishly, to time a joke perfectly, to find all 88 official constellations. Surely, if Mary would let him, he could learn to weave.


End file.
